Content Audits for Content Management

In today's digital landscape, where content is abundant and constantly evolving, effective content management has become more critical than ever before. Content management is often discussed in the context of content management systems (CMS) and migration projects are often the catalyst for a content inventory and content audit. But content management isn’t just about the tools you are using to author and distribute your content. Content management is also about knowing what you are managing and how well it’s serving its purpose for your business and your customers.

Content inventories and audits are powerful tools that empower you to understand and harness the value of your content assets. By undertaking comprehensive content inventories and audits, your organization can unlock valuable insights, streamline content management processes, and ensure long-term governance.

Understanding Content Inventories

If you don’t know you have it, you can’t manage it. A content inventory is the foundation of an effective content management process because it is a key step in taking stock of your content assets. A content inventory catalogs all the content on your digital property and typically includes details such as content type, format, creation date, author, location, and metadata. When enhanced with additional data such as analytics, an inventory can provide a very detailed starting point from which you can launch a qualitative evaluation (the content audit) and sets a baseline for informed decision-making and targeted optimization efforts.

Benefits of Content Inventories

See the big picture: A content inventory gives you the fullest possible picture of exactly how much content you are managing (or not, if you aren’t aware it’s there!). Having even raw numbers and calculations of content types helps with establishing the scope of any content initiative you are considering and provides early direction for content improvements as you identify patterns in the URLs, metadata, and analytics.

Uncover hidden gems: A content inventory can help you identify valuable content assets that may have been overlooked or forgotten. By analyzing an inventory that incorporates analytics data, you may be able to unearth high-performing content (or content that is worthy but not being found) which can be repurposed, updated, or featured prominently to drive engagement and conversions.

Identify content gaps: An inventory, particularly when mapped to a customer journey, can aid in finding gaps in your content and content strategy. With this knowledge, you can plan for new content creation to address the specific needs and interests of your target audiences along their customer journey and enhance the overall user experience.

Enhance collaboration: A well-organized content inventory facilitates collaboration among content creators, designers, marketers, and other stakeholders. It provides a central reference point for everyone involved, streamlining content development, maintenance, and updates, resulting in improved efficiency and consistency across channels.

Understanding Content Audits

While content inventories focus on cataloging existing assets, content audits go a step further by evaluating content quality, relevance, and performance against established goals. Content audits involve a systematic assessment of content assets, enabling organizations to identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement.

Benefits of Content Audits

Quality control: Content audits allow organizations to evaluate the quality and consistency of their content. By assessing factors such as grammar, style, tone, and accuracy in a qualitative audit or brand, performance, global, structural, or other aspects of content in a targeted content audit, you can set and maintain quality standards that reflect your brand identity.

 Relevance and freshness: Redundant, outdated, or trivial (ROT) content can harm a brand's credibility. Content audits enable organizations to identify and update outdated or irrelevant content, ensuring that their audience receives accurate and up-to-date information.

Performance analysis: With a data-enhanced content audit, you can measure content performance metrics such as engagement, conversion rates, and SEO rankings. This analysis provides valuable insights into which types of content resonate with your target audiences and which need improvement, guiding content strategy decisions.

Long-Term Governance

Content inventories and audits serve as critical tools for establishing long-term content governance. By gaining a comprehensive understanding of existing content assets and their performance, you can develop sustainable governance strategies that align with your business objectives.

Content lifecycle management: Content inventories and audits help you manage your entire content lifecycle effectively, enabling informed planning, creation, organization, distribution, and retirement of content assets, ensuring content remains relevant and valuable over time.

Compliance and risk mitigation: Content audits play a vital role in ensuring compliance with legal and industry standards. They help identify potential risks such as outdated information, inaccurate claims, or content that violates regulations. By addressing these issues proactively, organizations can mitigate risks and protect their reputation.

Content inventories and audits, particularly when done regularly (“rolling audits”) are indispensable tools for ongoing content management, ensuring that there is an up-to-date understanding of the quantity, types, and quality of content at any given time so that your organization can be responsive to your evolving business environment and your audience’s needs.